Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

Her eyes filled with tears. Never in her life had she felt like such a selfish shit. And never had she been savaged in such a furious manner. She bowed her head.

They sat in silence until Armansky said, “How are you doing?”

Salander shrugged.

“How are you making a living? Do you have work?”

“No, I don’t, and I don’t know what kind of work I want. But I’ve got a certain amount of money, so I’m getting by.”

Armansky scrutinized her with searching eyes.

“I just came by to say hello… I’m not looking for a job. I don’t know… maybe I’d do a job for you if you need me sometime, but it would have to be something that interests me.”

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what happened up in Hedestad last year.”

Salander did not answer.

“Well, something happened. Martin Vanger drove his car into a truck after you’d been back here to borrow surveillance gear, and somebody threatened you. And his sister came back from the dead. It was a sensation, to put it mildly.”

“I’ve given my word I wouldn’t talk about it.”

“And you don’t want to tell me what role you played in the Wennerström affair either.”

“I helped Kalle Blomkvist with research.” Her voice was suddenly much cooler. “That was all. I didn’t want to get involved.”

“Blomkvist has been looking for you high and low. He’s called here once a month to ask if I’ve heard anything from you.”

Salander remained silent, but Armansky saw that her lips were now pressed into a tight line.

“I can’t say that I like him,” Armansky said. “But he cares about you too. I met him once last autumn. He didn’t want to talk about Hedestad either.”

Salander did not want to discuss Blomkvist. “I just came to say hello and tell you that I’m back. I don’t know if I’ll be staying. This is my mobile number and my new email address if you need to get hold of me.”

She handed Armansky a piece of paper and stood up. She was already at the door when he called after her.

“Wait a second. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to say hello to Holger Palmgren.”

“OK. But I mean… what kind of work will you be doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you have to make a living.”

“I told you, I have enough to get by.”

Armansky leaned back in his chair. He was never quite sure how to interpret her words.

“I’ve been so fucking angry that you vanished without a word that I almost decided never to trust you again.” He made a face. “You’re so unreliable. But you’re a damned good researcher. I might have a job coming up that would be a good fit for you.”

She shook her head, but she came back to his desk.

“I don’t want a job from you. I mean, I don’t need one. I’m serious. I’m financially independent.”

Armansky frowned.

“OK, you’re financially independent, whatever that means. I’ll take your word for it. But when you need a job…”

“Dragan, you’re the second person I’ve visited since I got home. I don’t need your work. But for several years now you’ve been one of the few people that I respect.”

“Everybody has to make a living.”

“Sorry, but I’m no longer interested in doing personal investigations. Let me know if you run into a really interesting problem.”

“What sort of problem?”

“The kind you can’t make heads or tails of. If you get stuck and don’t know what to do. If I’m going to do a job for you, you’ll have to come up with something special. Maybe on the operations side.”

“Operations side? You? But you disappear without a trace whenever you feel like it.”

“I’ve never skipped out on a job that I agreed to do.”

Armansky looked at her helplessly. The term operations was jargon, but it meant field work. It could be anything from bodyguard duty to surveillance assignments for art exhibitions. His operations personnel were confident, stable veterans, many of them with a police background, and 90 percent of them were men. Salander was the polar opposite of all the criteria he had set out for personnel in the operations unit of Milton Security.

“Well…” he said dubiously, but she had vanished out the door. Armansky shook his head. She’s weird. She’s really weird.

The next second Salander was back in the doorway.

“Oh, by the way… You’ve had two guys spending a month protecting that actress Christine Rutherford from the nutcase who writes her threatening letters. You think it’s an inside job because the letter writer knows so many details about her.”

Armansky stared at Salander. An electric shock went through him. She’s done it again. She’s flung out a line about a case she absolutely cannot know a thing about.

“So…?”

“It’s a fake. She and her boyfriend have been writing the letters as a publicity stunt. She’s going to get another letter in the next few days, and they’ll leak it to the media next week. They’ll probably accuse Milton of leaking it. Cross her off your client list now.”

Before Armansky could say anything she was gone. He stared at the empty doorway. She could not possibly have known a single detail of the case. She must have an insider at Milton who kept her updated. But only four or five people apart from himself knew about it – the operations chief and the few people who reported on the threats – and they were all stable pros. Armansky rubbed his chin.

He looked down at his desk. The Rutherford file was locked inside it. The office had a burglar alarm. He glanced at the clock again and realized that Harry Fransson, chief of the technical department, would have finished for the day. He started up his email and sent a message asking Fransson to come to his office the following morning to install a surveillance camera.

Salander walked straight home to Mosebacke. She hurried because she had a feeling it was urgent.

She called the hospital in Söder and after some stalling from the switchboard managed to find out Palmgren’s whereabouts. For the past fourteen months he had been in a rehabilitation home in Ersta. All of a sudden she had a vision of Äppelviken. When she called she was told that he was asleep, but that she was welcome to visit him the next day.

Salander spent the evening pacing back and forth in her apartment. She was in a foul mood. She went to bed early and fell asleep almost at once. She woke at 7:00 a.m., showered, and had breakfast at the 7-Eleven. At 8:00 she walked to the car rental agency on Ringvägen. I’ve got to get my own car. She rented the same Nissan Micra she had driven to Äppelviken a few weeks earlier.

She was unaccountably nervous when she parked near the rehabilitation centre, but she gathered up her courage and went inside.

The woman at the front desk consulted her papers and explained that Holger Palmgren was in the gym for therapy just then and would not be available until after 11:00. Salander was welcome to take a seat in the waiting room or come back later. She went and sat in the car and smoked three cigarettes while she waited. At 11:00 she went back to the front desk. She was told to go to the dining hall, down the corridor to the right and then to the left.

She stopped in the doorway and recognized Palmgren in the half-empty dining room. He sat facing her, but was focusing all his attention on his plate. He held his fork in an awkward grip and steered the food to his mouth with great concentration. Every third time or so he missed and the food fell off the fork.

He looked shrunken; he might be a hundred years old. His face seemed strangely immobile. He was sitting in a wheelchair. Only then did Salander take it in that he was alive, that Armansky had not just been punishing her.